Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Senate panel OKs 6 judges for U.S. court in Ariz.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved six candidates nominated by President Barack Obama to fill judicial vacancies at the U.S. District Court for Arizona to help ease a judicial emergency in effect for three years.

Federal judgeships are political footballs, subject to partisan bickering at the highest levels of U.S. government.

“What happened today was unprecedented in the Obama administration,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law who studies the federal bench.

The nominees must still be confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a whole.

The stalemate was broken by the efforts of Arizona senators John McCain and Jeff Flake, Tobias said.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he expected the nominees to be confirmed.

“The progress we made today in the committee to move these nominations forward would not have occurred without the support of Senator McCain and Senator Flake,” Leahy said.

Leahy noted that there are more than 90 judicial vacancies nationwide.

Named to the Arizona bench were:

• Steven Paul Logan, who steps up from his current position as U.S. magistrate judge for the District of Arizona.

• John Joseph Tuchi,chief assistant U.S. Attorney for Arizona, who works out of the Phoenix office.

• Rosemary Márquez, a Tucson attorney in private practice with a long career as a state and federal public defender.

• James Alan Soto, a Santa Cruz County Superior Court judge in Nogales.

• Douglas Rayes, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge.

• Diane Humetewa, a former U.S. Attorney for Arizona who also served as a prosecutor and judge for the Hopi tribe. If confirmed, Humetewa would be the first Native American woman to become a federal judge.

According to Phoenix attorney Larry Hammond, the federal court in Arizona has seen a rapid increase in its caseload, not just because of population growth, but because of the state’s tribal lands and its proximity to the Mexican border.

Thursday’s approvals came 3½ years after the Arizona District’s Court then-chief judge, John Roll, asked the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to declare a state of judicial emergency because of the vacancies.

Then the crisis worsened: Roll was murdered in Jan. 2011 by Jared Loughner, the man who killed six and wounded 13 others, including then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, outside a supermarket near Tucson.

Since then, other sitting judges have been appointed to other courts or taken senior status, in which they usually work a lighter caseload.

Roll’s successor as chief judge, Roslyn Silver, declared the emergency after his death, which allowed statutory time limits for trying defendants to be temporarily suspended in the district.